The Chronicle of a Reformed Feminist Killjoy

Fucking People Man.

For those who don’t know, every other day I’m a very confident person.On the off days, I’m myself.

I limit what I eat, I worry about my shoe size, I have straight panic attacks remembering that I published my own abortion story on the internet.

On my real confident days I just go to sleep really fucking tired because being someone I’m not is fucking exhausting and yet I work really hard to hide it a lot of the time.

I date a pretty successful and self made photographer with a lot of really successful and some mildly famous friends.I constantly worry that I’m the shlep his friends wonder why he’s with.My friends are all extremely successful in so many ways; successful (it just took me about 4 tries and spellcheck to get that fucking word correct) entrepreneurs, happily married, accomplished musicians, world travelers and amazing writers/musicians/artists.And then there is me.

It’s really hard for me to walk into a room full of people and not panic or freak out because I feel physically ill that someone might ask me any questions about my life. I hate when people want to know about my life, which is unfair because I’m pretty fucking nosy. But I’m am so afraid of being not good enough that I’ve actually locked myself in bathrooms at parties because the pressure of being around so many people has either made me cry or feel nauseous.

Small talk literally kills off a part of me.I know that the answers I want to give are not what I’m supposed to give and so I end up faking it and feeling shittier.

“Where do you live?”-My parent’s house. I lived in a cat piss/blood covered apartment for a year with a roommate who never cleaned so I stopped cleaning. And honestly I was poor as fuck because I ate too much take out and drank too much booze and had to unexpectedly self finance an abortion, so really moving home has been a vacation! Where are you from?”

I image this is where people at a party would either kick me out or, more likely, just walk away and not invite me next time.

“So I heard you’re a writer?” is probably my least favorite bit of small talk because in my head there are only two reasons they’re asking, 1. because they’re actually interested and want to read what I write, which is frightening because the topic of drunkenly breaking into a strip club is not usually a winning one at a dinner party.or 2. they already know what I’ve written and think I’m a half baked version of some 14 year old trying to imitate the avant-garde style of the beat generation and they want me to talk myself up so they can laugh when I go to the bathroom.Were the Beats considered avant-garde? I have no fucking idea.

“What do you go to school for?” is actually an ok topic because there is a 50/50 chance (I made those stats up) I won’t be talking to another english major, and upon hearing that I have a useless degree in word-smithing they either shift the conversation to their fascinating biowhatever’sprobablygoingtoendandthensavehumanity degree or they internally wonder how many of their tax dollars will eventually support my broke ass as they walk away suggesting I think about law school.

In the unfortunate event I get another English major it’s another crap shoot. I could get someone who wants to discuss how deep and feely Keats’ poetry is or the fascinating philosophy behind “On The Road”. In which case I start to wish I was illiterate rather than admit I have no fucking idea what Ode to a Grecian Urn is about and that I have developed an unfair and totally childishly biased hate for Kerouac who I think was a miserable bastard who avoided people probably for the sole purpose of avoiding the kind of bullshit conversations I’m writing about. My god maybe we’re alike. killme.HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT RUN ON SENTENCE YOU ENGLISH BASTARDS?

If I’m lucky, in that room full of people ( this is a fucking metaphor for the world you Philistines!) I’ll encounter someone like me who just wants to be left alone and we’ll bond over that rather than discussing the useless bullshit that everyone else is using to measure how “good enough” we are for society.